The present invention relates in general to vending machines and in particular to a new and useful dispensing unit on the merchandise chutes or shafts of a vending machine, especially those for cans or bottles with block and support areas at the lower end of the merchandise shafts. The merchandise stack, in the resting position of a dispensing element for the stack, is kept in the merchandise shaft by the block area so that no merchandise reaches the support area. By rotation of the block area, a product reaches the support area and this product leaves the support area in the direction of a dispensing shelf compartment.
A shelf dispensing unit of this kind is described in German OS No. 25 10 500. In this reference, a dispensing element is provided for each merchandise shaft. To increase the capacity in each merchandise shaft, two rows of products are stored in staggered fashion with respect to each other, which now are only joined together just before the dispensing element. With this kind of vending machine it is not possible to increase the number of types of product available.
With German OS No. 25 10 500 the dispensing element has two cross bars which are driven by an electric motor via an eccentric in such a way that one bottle or can reaches the dispensing compartment at a time. Since the dispensing element has to be moved against the weight of the merchandise column the motor has to be correspondingly strong. The motor is placed in such a way that it occupies a part of the depth in the vending machine. The depth of the machine is thus limited with respect to the volume of merchandise it can hold.
In German Pat. No. 29 16 694, a dispensing unit of the kind mentioned above is also described. Here too, each merchanidse shaft has its own dispensing element. The dispensing element is moved alternately from right to left. It is necessary to have as many merchandise shafts available as there are kinds of merchandise to dispense.
According to German Pat. No. 29 16 694, the shaft can be designed so that a guiding metal sheet narrows it in its front half to one side and in its back half to the other side. It thus becomes possible to stack shorter products whereby alternately one product of the back supply of products and one product of the front supply is dispensed.